20 Miles

I was a team captain at a Relay For Life my junior year in high school. I'd hoped to have it count as a culminating project, but it didn't work out. My dad's band had planned to play during the relay, but that didn't happen either. On that Friday, even though I wore the t-shirt, I didn't feel quite so gung-ho about walking around a track all night. I wanted to get home, get things done, and enjoy my weekend. To escalate that, classes were shortened so students could get yearbooks and sign them. I got mine, signed a little, and then high-tailed it out of there.
As I walked home, cars of kids passed going both directions. One coming toward me slowed and sort of pulled up next to me with the windows down.
"Smoke crack and do drugs! Whoo!" and the kid drove off with his buddies howling.Of course I wouldn't follow it, but the punchline for them was my bright green Relay For Life - Team Captain shirt. I shrugged it off and moved on. I had to teach a piano lesson and put my stuff together quickly to set up my site. It was annoying to find that my registration papers couldn't be found, but they still let me in on the condition I just filled another one out. I did, and I just needed my mom to sign it, but it was eventually forgotten and no one kicked me out, so I wondered why it mattered.
The jazz choir had to perform, of course, and it was fun. That is, until our director changed doing Black Water to I Just Can't Stop loving You. He'd said we were doing it, I was all ready with my fiddle and excited, and he simply changed it. You could say it was to fit our time, but honestly, it wouldn't have made a dfference. Just put one song in the other's place and we were fine. But he had his favorites. He loved having Kena and Jordan shine and loved shoving the rest of the group (me most of all) aside. I wasn't doing the choir the upcoming year for him. I was doing it for myself.
Somehow I ended up talking to Cody Gaby. He was a drummer in the school band and that was really all I knew. I didn't think it at the time, but talking to him might have been a factor in making me deide to stay the night. I went home really quick and grabbed blankets, pillow, sleeping bag and such.
When I put my stuff in the tent we'd set up there, I got out my cd player and walked to Newsies. I knew I was old-schooling it, but I didn't care. At first I felt weird getting into the music, since no one could hear the songs besides me and I was rather self conscious. I did minimal hand motions during the first time through the soundtrack. Then I realized our drama director and the musical director were here. This would be a great opportunity to, per say, audition some more and even even make them laugh. Not that I'd pay attention to their reactions, because then they'd know what I was doing. So the second time I went through the album, I used the faces and had bigger motions, and mostly kept out trying to do dance moves with turns. I don't know what others saw, but who cared?
After that I put the music away and walked alone. But it wasn't long until Cody popped up again.
"Hey, you wanna walk with me?" he asked. "My friends are being lame and they ditched me."
"Sure," I told him indifferently.